the capacity to choose; and it denies the potential of this
revolution if we assume the Government is best positioned to make
these choices for us.").


A faithful translation of First Amendment values from the
context of traditional public fora such as sidewalks and parks to
the distinctly non-traditional public forum of Internet access in
public libraries requires, in our view, that content-based
restrictions on Internet access in public libraries be subject to
the same exacting standards of First Amendment scrutiny as
content-based restrictions on speech in traditional public fora
such as sidewalks, town squares, and parks:
The architecture of the Internet, as it is right now,
is perhaps the most important model of free speech
since the founding. . . . Two hundred years after the
framers ratified the Constitution, the Net has taught
us what the First Amendment means. . . . The model for
speech that the framers embraced was the model of the
Internet – distributed, noncentralized, fully free and
diverse.
Lessig, Code, at 167, 185. Indeed, "[m]inds are not changed in
streets and parks as they once were. To an increasing degree,
the more significant interchanges of ideas and shaping of public
consciousness occur in mass and electronic media." Denver Area
Educ. Telecomms. Consortium, Inc. v. FCC, 518 U.S. 727, 802-03
(1996) (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment).


In providing patrons with even filtered Internet access, a